Star Corps

by Ian Douglas

  This he thought, was the make-or-break moment.

  King looked at him, arms folded, his face bleak. “Well, Colonel? What’s your call?”

  “Only two ways to play it, General. We reinforce Suribachi or we pull them out. Recommendations?”

  King shook his head. “This one is yours, Colonel. Purely tactical. If you’re asking for advice, I’d say we’ve obviously kicked them where it hurts, so keep on kicking.”

  Ramsey nodded. “That was my feeling, sir. We—”

  “Colonel!” Major Anderson called from one of the communications consoles nearby. “Heavy enemy forces approaching the north wall. It looks like they’re making an attempt to overrun the compound!”

  “Acknowledged.” He cocked his head, listening to the radio chatter for a moment.

  “Godawmighty, lookit ’em come!”

  “Pour it on ’em, people! Burn ’em down!”

  “I’ve got Frogs coming in on the northwest corner! There’s too many! We need help!”

  “Let ’em come! Let the bastards come!”

  “Pick your targets, Marines. Make every shot count!”

  “Fox Seven! Fox Seven! We’re being flanked!”

  “Tomlin! Get the pig up there on the northeast corner! Move it! Move it!”

  “Dragon Nest, Dragon Nest, this is Echo Two! We have Frogs, lots of Frogs, rushing the north gate! We’ve got humans with climbing poles down there! They’re rushing us! They’re…”

  The situation was growing increasingly desperate. If he didn’t reinforce Task Force Warhurst atop the Pyramid of the Eye, he could lose all forty-eight men up there. But if he took men out of the compound to reinforce Warhurst, he would weaken the defenses here and open the MIEU to the possibility of being completely overrun.

  He realized that King, Anderson, and most of the others in the cramped combat center were watching him.

  “Major Anderson.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Pass the word to Captain Sanders,” Ramsey said, naming the Bravo Company commander. “He’s to reinforce the attack at the east gate.”

  “Aye aye, sir!”

  He locked gazes with King. “Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb,” he said. “We win this thing here and now.”

  “I concur,” King said. “And God help us all.”

  Lance Corporal Garroway

  Pyramid of the Eye

  New Sumer, Ishtar

  1645 hours ALT

  Odd. Garroway felt as though he were two people…one very present, completely engulfed in the sound and fury of the battle, the other detached…not numb, exactly, but not entirely present, not connected to what was happening. His body went through the movements of aim-and-fire automatically, with mechanical precision and almost completely unconscious control. He responded to orders, hearing the radioed shouts of comrades and officers, and yet he heard them all as if from a tremendous distance. At first he wondered if he were still feeling the effects of the NNTs, but those should have been broken down and reabsorbed by his body long ago. It was…interesting to be engaged in the firefight, yet without the nearly paralyzing fear that had gripped him the day before.

  The panorama view from the top of the pyramid, the detached portion of his mind thought, was an eldritch scene from some old-fashioned Christian hell, brooding, a red-lit nightmare sprawling beneath ominous black clouds, rising pillars of smoke, and the swooping drift and stoop of Marine Dragonflies.

  The loss of one TAV-S, Garroway was delighted to see, had not deterred the others. Four of the aircraft were in the air, laying down heavy close-support fire despite gauss-gun volleys and rocket fire from the city streets below. Their efforts seemed to be stemming the flood of enemy reinforcements from wherever they were coming from and zeroing in with laser-targeted accuracy on the launch sites of those primitive rockets.

  “Fall back! They’re coming over the edge! Fall back!”

  Garroway had dropped his own overheated LR-2120 and picked up Jennings’s weapon, the cables still attached to the backpack of the dead Marine. Now, though, the order had come to fall back from the rim of the pyramid roof. He didn’t want to leave Jennings’s body…but he couldn’t handle that and both weapons as well.

  The Ahannu warriors were nearly at the top of the pyramid, scrambling ever higher despite devastating losses to their ranks. He could see their huge, golden eyes shining in the red light as they climbed. To his left Garroway sensed a wild, swirling struggle as the Frogs reached the top and began spilling onto the paved rooftop of the pyramid, grappling hand-to-hand with the defenders.

  He triggered another couple of bursts into the Ahannu god-warrior horde, then tried to wrestle with Jennings’s body. Shit, this wasn’t going to work.

  “I’ve got him.” Sergeant Dunne stooped, grabbing the body by the handhold on the back of Jennings’s power pack, and started dragging him across the pavement. Garroway picked up his own laser, checked temperature and power supply, then backed up alongside Dunne, covering the other Marine as he retrieved the body.

  Marines did not leave their own behind, whenever that was humanly possible.

  The Ahannu reached the north edge of the pyramid roof and started scrambling over the rim, hundreds of them, most waving scythe-tipped lances, elaborate war clubs, or curved-bladed iron swords. Many carried black and red banners, while a few had gauss guns.

  One Ahannu god-warrior in green and black leather armor brandished a particularly grisly trophy—a mutilated human head spiked on the end of a long spear, the mouth and empty eye sockets gaping. It must, Garroway thought, be the head of one of the Marines lost yesterday inside An-Kur, when the Frogs overran the relay inside one of the tunnels and killed the people guarding it.

  Or…was that the preserved head of one of the Marines who’d died defending the Legation compound ten years ago? Either way, it was one reason why Marines did not abandon even their dead. Furious, he triggered his 2120, sending a burst of coherent light through the Ahannu’s armor and setting it ablaze. The Frog shrieked and fell backward off the edge, dropping its trophy into the crowd of its comrades.

  And there was another trophy, of sorts…an Ahannu wearing a Marine-issue power pack and awkwardly lugging a Sunbeam LR-2120 in splayed, six-fingered hands. Half a dozen Marine lasers cut that warrior down before it had a chance to fire.

  The Ahannu, obviously, were technical enough to be able to use captured Marine weapons, though it seemed a bit reckless of them to risk losing them again in front-line combat. Maybe they were getting desperate, throwing everything they had into a do or die effort.

  Well, the Corps could play that tune as well. Slowly, begrudging every step, the Marines fell back across the top of the pyramid, continuing to rake the oncoming enemy with volley upon volley of laser, plasma gun, and smart-grenade fire. As their perimeter contracted, they began crowding one another, armored shoulders bumping shoulders as they created a solid and unbroken wall of polylaminate Mark VII armor. They backed to the place where a portion of the roof had caved in and swiftly began dropping down onto the canted stone blocks, using the crater and broken slabs as cover as they continued to burn down the charging Ahannu god-warriors.

  There was no place else to go.

  Kneeling in the crater, his laser dangerously overheated, Garroway kept firing. He’d switched to single shot when his breech core temperature redlined and his coolant reserve began steaming, but he knew he didn’t have many shots left before the weapon malfunctioned.

  He had two magazines of smart grenades left. He snapped one into the magazine receiver and chambered a round.

  The Ahannu god-warriors rushed forward, keening their shrill battle cries….

  Captain Warhurst

  Pyramid of the Eye

  New Sumer, Ishtar

  1650 hours ALT

  “Dragon Nest, Dragon Nest, this is Suribachi,” Warhurst called over the command channel. “Come in, Dragon Nest!”

  “Suribachi, Dragon Nest. Go ahead.” It was
the colonel’s voice.

  Warhurst stood on the steeply canted slab of cut stone, balanced on the edge of the crater atop the Pyramid of the Eye. The Ahannu and their human slave-warriors were scant meters away, rushing the Marine perimeter from north, west, and south.

  “Dragon Nest, they have us pushed into a pocket. We’re taking heavy casualties. Request air strikes, repeat, air strikes in close support of this position.”

  “We copy that, Suribachi. Our air reports it’s hard to see what’s happening up there. They don’t want to cause friendly fire casualties. Over.”

  “Fuck that!” Warhurst yelled into his mike. He was firing his laser rifle in quick, steady pulses, burning down the charging Frogs one after another, and still they kept coming. “The Annies are all over the fucking pyramid! Dust the whole area! Now!”

  There was a brief hesitation. “Roger that, Suribachi. Dragons deployed in close support. Keep your heads down!”

  He didn’t answer. The wall of Ahannu hit the western arc of the Marine perimeter first, then the north, god-warriors leaping high above the line and coming down behind and among the struggling Marines.

  Suddenly, the fight was a swirling hand-to-hand melee at knife-fighting range, as the Marines at the edge of the pit battled for survival.

  Lance Corporal Garroway

  Pyramid of the Eye

  New Sumer, Ishtar

  1657 hours ALT

  An Ahannu god-warrior hit Garroway full-on, knocking him backward. He dropped his laser but was able to hold the writhing Frog off long enough to drag his combat knife from its sheath on his chest and plunge it up to the hilt into the being’s throat. He turned the blade and slashed to the side, and the Ahannu’s head flopped back, gape-mouthed, in a spray of pale blood. Garroway rolled to the side, scooping up his laser in his left hand, clutching the bloody knife in his right. He was shoulder-to-shoulder with Garvey as a dozen Ahannu closed on them from all sides. More god-warriors were emerging from inside the crater, clambering up out of the shadows of a small tunnel. Damn it, they were everywhere, and the Marine line had dissolved into tiny and isolated teams of squad mates fighting hand-to-hand.

  More Marines were falling as impossible numbers overwhelmed technology, swords and lances piercing armor joints. Sergeant Couch vanished beneath a thrashing pile of Ahannu warriors. Tomlin’s plasma gun fell silent as the Marine gunner was torn to pieces. Half the assault force at least was down now, and the rest would be dead in seconds.

  Garroway raised his laser and triggered it as an enemy warrior rushed him; the weapon gave a crackling hiss and failed as status lights on his helmet display warned of power failure, overheating, a ruptured coolant coil, and a burned-out feed coupling. Pivoting sharply, he brought the 2120’s butt up and around sharply, connecting with the side of the Frog’s head. He felt rather than heard the satisfying crunch as the skull caved in.

  He swung again, taking down an Ahannu waving a wickedly curved sword. And again…and again…

  “John!…”

  Four Frogs swarmed onto Garvey, knocking him down. Razor-tipped lances and swords plunged, seeking the flexible joints between hard-shelled carbon-polylaminate sections, at shoulders, neck, hips, and waist. Garvey shrieked….

  Garroway swung his rifle level, like a baseball bat, connecting with one of the Ahannu and knocking it away from his friend. Something struck him hard in the left arm, spinning him back and away. “Gravy!” he shouted. “Hang on!”

  Garroway tried to swing his rifle again and found his left arm heavy, numb…he couldn’t move it. Awkwardly one-handed, he tried swinging the battered weapon and saw it shatter against the breastplate of a looming Ahannu troll. He dropped the weapon, reached for his knife…and realized he’d dropped it somewhere in the last few seconds. Screwing his face into his best boot-camp war mask, he screamed a Marine battle cry as he charged the towering creature. “Ooh-rah!”

  He collided with the thing and drove it back, toppling it over. It vented a throaty, hissing grunt and twisted, knocking him aside like a discarded rag doll. It stood then, over two meters tall even when stooped forward, its golden eyes deeply recessed in heavy bony orbits that gave it a hulking, Neanderthal look as it raised a two-meter club edged with razor-sharp shards of volcanic glass.

  “Duck and cover, Marines!” Captain Warhurst’s voice yelled over the tactical channel. “Everybody down and freeze!”

  Garroway was already down and unable to move. The troll shrieked, its club raised high….

  And then the sky flashed, brighter than Earth’s sun. The troll stood transfixed for an instant as flesh and armor dissolved in searing white flame.

  Somehow, Garroway managed to roll to the left as the burning carcass crumpled and fell forward, landing on the spot he’d occupied an instant before. All around him other Ahannu were burning…burning…falling, running, shrieking and burning, as fiery death exploded from the sky.

  Take something flammable—fertilizer will do—in finely powdered form. Disperse it in air and ignite it. The result is a fuel-air explosive, or FAE, a weapon first developed two centuries before, occasionally referred to as a “poor man’s nuke,” or as a “daisy cutter” for its ability to quickly clear large areas of forest.

  The upgraded version of the FAE were Dispersed Nano-munitions, in the form of DNM-85 thermal microbomblets. Each bomblet, accreted from supplies of thermite, aluminum, magnesium, and trace elements, was smaller than a grain of sand, and individually, each carried less explosive force than an igniting match.

  Disperse millions of DNM bomblets from delivery canisters set to explode two meters above the ground, and the air itself burns, briefly, at a temperature of well over a thousand degrees.

  A pair of Marine Dragonflies howled low across the top of the pyramid, racing west to east scant meters above the corpse-littered pavement, scattering DNM-85s into the Ahannu swirling hordes. For an instant the top of the pyramid blazed in unholy flame. Dozens of Ahannu caught fire or exploded in that deadly incendiary storm.

  “Stay down, Marines!” Warhurst yelled over the tactical channel. “Friendly fire incoming!”

  A second pair of Dragonflies shrieked in from north to south, scattering more bomblets in a deadly, burning footprint, setting fire to stacked heaps of bodies, causing broken pavement stone to crack and explode. Garroway pressed himself to the pavement as hot gravel rattled off his armor, as his suit’s internal temperature briefly soared in the inferno. Designed to withstand high temperatures, even Mark VII armor could not shed that kind of heat for more than seconds without melting.

  Most of the firestorm burned itself out a meter or more above the pavement, though, and as the fireball rose, temperatures on the surface of the pyramid fell. Garroway heard the laboring of his suit’s refrigeration and drew a hot breath of relief as his HDO’s temp gauge dropped from the unbearable to the merely uncomfortable.

  Looking up, he saw Garvey lying on his back a meter away; he crawled that meter and threw himself over the unmoving Marine as the first pair of Dragonflies swung around for another pass.

  “Corpsman!” he yelled. “Corpsman!” But there were no medical corpsmen in Task Force Warhurst, and Gerrold Garvey was already dead.

  Garroway lay there, stretched across his friend’s body, waiting for the world to end….

  25

  27 JUNE 2148

  Lance Corporal Garroway

  Pyramid of the Eye

  New Sumer, Ishtar

  1705 hours ALT

  But it didn’t end.

  The thunder, scorching heat, and whirlwind of death, however, faded. Garroway looked up, astonished, in a numb and distant way, at being still alive. Somehow, the airstrike had burned over the upper reaches of the pyramid, and yet he and a scattered handful of other Marines were still moving, standing slowly and looking about, all with the same dazed and lost demeanor.

  The Ahannu were dead…their bodies stacked and scattered and strewn in grotesque and interlocked tangles across the upper surfa
ce of the pyramid, most of them charred into unrecognizable abstracts of ash and cinder, many still burning.

  No…not all were dead. As Garroway turned, he saw several Ahannu at the bottom of the crater, wiggling into the darkness of a small, open tunnel. They must have been coming up inside the Marine perimeter at the same time they were breaking the line. He looked around for a rifle but saw only the twisted fragments of his own lying on a black-scorched chunk of paving stone. An Ahannu lance, three meters long and tipped by a curving blade, lay nearby. He picked that up in lieu of any more modern weapon.

  But it didn’t look as though he would need it. The Ahannu in the crater had vanished down their hole, and the only ones atop the pyramid now were dead. He walked unsteadily across to the western edge of the pyramid roof and looked down. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Ahannu and Sag-ura bodies were strewn up and down the broad steps, but that fiery rain of airborne death had left none alive. In the streets below, Ahannu were fleeing as the Marine relief force out of the compound rushed the base of the Pyramid of the Eye.

  The enemy attack had been broken, decisively broken.

  Another Dragonfly was angling in out of the west, but this time coming in nose high on a landing approach instead of in attack attitude, with twenty-four more armored Marines slung from the harness on its spinal strut. Reinforcements…a little late, perhaps, but unexpected and very welcome. He looked about, wondering. Forty-eight Marines had landed atop the pyramid a little over an hour ago. He saw only eight others standing now in the swirling gray smoke, all looking as isolated and as lost as he felt.

  He saw an LR-2120 on the pavement and walked over to pick it up. His left arm, he realized, wasn’t working…a dead weight. Exploring the surface of the armor with his right hand, he found a hole punched through the thickly layered body glove fabric at the shoulder, but he couldn’t feel a thing.